Everyone loves volunteers nowadays. National Volunteering Week, which has just ended, prompted a surge of promises, even a speech from the Conservative leader, David Cameron, and a rare Commons debate in which MPs struggled fitfully to find points of agreement.

Clearly, we have come a long way from the time, barely a generation ago, when many on the left still looked forward to the day when state agencies would relieve voluntary organisations and, worse, "charities" of their redundant tasks. In Ed Miliband, Labour has a cabinet minister for the third sector. The Tories think it a silly name, but a good idea. They would replace him with a minister for civil society, with a beefed-up staff and a select committee.

The right has also moved on from 1987, when Margaret Thatcher famously told Woman's Own magazine that "there is no such thing as society". True, her words were wrenched from their more emollient context, but Cameron now goes out of his way to insist that, yes, there is such a thing after all, and it does need to work with government.

Does he mean it? When Cameron last week published his party's latest green paper - A Stronger Society: Voluntary Action in the 21st Century - some Labour MPs were quick to detect a slash-and-burn return to Victorian self-help values.

That kneejerk response was on a par with those of Francis Maude and other Tory MPs in last week's debate. They accuse Labour of demoralising Britain's generally thriving voluntary sector - one in three of us volunteer, second only to Norway in Europe, and create £27.5bn worth of value to the economy - by seeking to impose statist, top-down, red-tape entwined solutions on a sector that thrives best unencumbered.

As usual, there is truth in both caricatures. Labour's Experience Corps, intended to bolster volunteering among older citizens, got off to a disappointing start, the voluntary sector reported. Its equivalent body for young people, known as V, has a budget of £117m, which is eyed with envy by those who think they could spend it faster and better by handing out the cash directly. The Tories are reserving judgment on their fate if elected in 2010.

In its defence, Labour can point to a nurturing budget for voluntary bodies that has doubled to £10bn. Even in our frenetic times, volunteer numbers are up, though busy people now tend to offer fewer hours and fewer years.

In response to complaints from Lady [Julia] Neuberger's commission on the future of volunteering and, 10 days ago, Lady [Sally] Morgan's inquiry into barriers to young volunteers, ministers have issued fresh guidelines. They are intended to ease such impediments as excessive criminal record checks for those dealing with youngsters; to make it easier to pay expenses; and make it harder to fall foul of complex benefit rules. All inhibit the very volunteering that may give young adults the skills, contacts and confidence they need to get into the workplace.

But what of the Tories' own plans, devised by many hands under the eye of MP Greg Clark? Clark denies illiberal intent. Far from slashing "Big Lottery" money going to voluntary bodies, his new voluntary action lottery fund will preserve or enhance it. Far from abandoning unpopular charities with political axes to grind (asylum seekers, anyone?), they will protect them.

The emerging Tory priority is to give real teeth to Labour's post-1998 contracts with third sector bodies that provide public services and often end up subsidising them. By assuring them they will recover all their costs - and even make a profit - the Tories hope to spread best practice, so that a brilliant drug rehab programme in Brixton can be replicated in Bristol or Bolton. But not because Whitehall says so.

· Michael White is a Guardian assistant editor and political commentator